


Family Outing

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Series: Take Me Anywhere [3]
Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, M/M, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: Clint's wrapping up an op when he gets the news about Jason's father. He thinks he knows how to help, but sometimes he thinks he knows too much. It's okay, though. Family is enough.





	Family Outing

“Always grabbing your phone before you can even leave the briefing room,” Phil sighs with a grin on his face.

He’s teasing, and Clint knows it. It was a long fucking briefing. He unlocks his phone as he flips Phil off. “Don’t yell at me,” he says. “I’m a professional. I waited for everyone else to leave.”

Phil huffs in reply, but Clint doesn’t notice. He’s slamming his feet to the floor and shoving his chair back from the table with a very unprofessional “Fuck.”

“Clint?”

Clint looks up at Phil with a scowl. “I have to go.  Elle and Chris just heard the verdict.”

Phil’s face drops into a frown and Clint can hear him take a steadying breath. “Well?”

Clint closes his eyes. “Twenty years.”

The room is silent. Phil is still and Clint is still and the air is suddenly thick, like someone dumped so much emotion in that it’s clogging the place. Clint stands up and runs his hand through his hair. “I know I need to submit my report before I go,” he begins, but Phil is moving, too, and he pushes Clint’s phone toward his pocket.

“Go. I’ll put you down for sick leave. We’ll do it tomorrow.” Phil pulls Clint’s chin up so that he has to stare into Phil’s sharp blue eyes. “Take your time, but don’t be alone after. Come home, okay?”

Clint blinks away a memory of a very tall, dark-haired police officer standing in front of him and Barney, telling the boys that their father had wrapped his car around a tree with their mother along for the ride, and the sharp fear mixed with a weird spark of hope that came with the news.

He blows out a breath and nods. “It’s like you know me or somethin’,” he says with a wobbly grin, and Phil nods.

“Or somethin’,” he answers. “Go.”

Ten minutes later and Clint is stuck in traffic and trying to keep his cool. He turns up the volume on the radio and drowns out his thoughts, which are bouncing around like a pinball. His friendship with Jason, a lanky 13 year-old kid with a wicked sense of humor and brains that make Clint wonder what Bruce Banner was like as a teenager has become one of Clint’s favorite things, along with how that friendship facilitated his relationship with Phil, which is definitely his most favorite thing.

Now Jason’s father has been sentenced to twenty years in prison with no chance of parole. Elle’s firm prosecuted him, guaranteeing an airtight case, and Elle and Chris have been keeping Clint posted as the case progressed. Jason won’t talk to him about it.

Now, after months of avoiding the subject, Clint isn’t sure what he’s going to find, but he’s going to be there for Jason and his new family. That’s what friends do.

He arrives at their flat and manages a decent parking space, and climbs the steps two at a time before ringing their doorbell.

Chris opens the door looking haggard and worried. Of Chris and Elle, Chris is the one who has the hardest time with Jason’s tendency to shut his feelings down completely, a skill Clint fostered in his own early years with an abusive father. Chris and Clint have traded several rounds of texts where Chris complains that Jason won’t talk to them and Clint advises him to back off, give the kid time, and get the kid doing something with them because he’s more likely to talk around doing something rather than to just sit down and discuss feelings.

 Clint knows this because Phil has been doing this for years before they managed to get together and start being lovers. Deep conversations on the living room couch aren’t a thing, but deep conversations while cooking dinner or sparring at SHEILD are definitely a thing. Phil can coax anything out of Clint if Clint’s hands are busy.

“I have tried playing catch, I have tried baking cookies, I have tried Mario Kart, and nothing is working. He’s not said a word since we left the courthouse,” Chris complains, ushering Clint into their small townhouse.

Clint sighs and nods. “Chris, this is big. The usual probably won’t work today.”

Chris and Elle don’t really ask Clint for parenting advice per se. They’ve raised two kids of their own already and thought that taking in a foster kid with the potential for adoption would be fulfilling is all. But Jason brought a basket full of issues that they weren’t quite prepared for, and that Clint experienced firsthand as a kid, so their tendency to rely on him has gotten a bit predictable.

Clint’s fine with it. Jason stole his heart in a deserted stairwell that smelled faintly of stale takeout and mildew a year ago, and he’s not betting on getting it back. He’s happy to help when he can. “Is he upstairs?”

Elle nods. “Do you want a drink before you go up?”

“You know, I just left debrief. Could I have a coffee?” Clint asks.

“How about I brew a fresh pot and bring a cup up in a few minutes?”

Clint just gives her a thumbs up and heads up the stairs to Jason’s small bedroom. Jason’s not a big kid, lanky and not quite tall enough to be much for basketball, even though it’s the game he loves most. He’s lying on his twin bed right now, sprawled the length of it with one leg pulled up toward his chest, and all Clint can see is his tousled black hair that he and Elle occasionally bicker over. He wears it long and lets his loose curls pile up, and Elle is a bit of a traditionalist in weird, unexpected ways for someone so progressive.

 There’s a poster of Chris Paul from the Celtics on Jason’s wall, alongside a movie poster for the third Harry Potter movie, a few smaller magazine pictures of basketball players, TV shows, and then a concentrated group of photographs of Chris, Elle, Phil, and Clint, all with Jason. Clint looks at it as he sits down at the small desk in the corner of the room, and it reminds him that he’s actually been a part of helping to build the family Jason is setting up for himself here.

“Hey kid,” he says, trying for easygoing. Jason could be in any kind of mood at this point.

There’s a long pause, and then a muffled, “Hey, Clint,” with no attempt to roll over or sit up.

Clint can’t help the smile. It’s actually a better response than the middle finger he kind of expected. “Do you want to talk about the trial?” he asks, and he grits his teeth, because the middle finger might still come out.

Jason heaves a heavy sigh in response, and then burrows a little more into his pillow.

Clint gives him a minute or two, and then moves over to the bed, sits down next to Jason, and ruffles his hair a little. “We don’t have to talk about it,” he says. “But it might help if I knew what’s going on in your head. You know,” he says with a pause, “So I can figure out if I need to bust you out of here tonight and take you for ice cream, popcorn, and a movie so you don’t have to think about it.”

Jason rolls over and grins. “You’d do that?” he asks, and his voice is rough and he sounds tired.

“Of course,” Clint replies with a shrug. “Sometimes not thinking about it works out best. I’m not saying I recommend it today, but if you really want to,” he trails off and nods his head toward the door.

Jason glances over at the door and its offer of escape, but then he blows a breath out and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know. Chris and Elle want me to talk about it.”

“Chris and Elle want to make sure you’re not freaking out.”

At that, Jason sits up and leans into Clint’s shoulder. “I’m not freaking out. I knew it was going to be a bad sentence.”

Clint suddenly thinks he’s reading this wrong. “Do you wish he’d been let off?” he asks, trying to sound neutral.

Jason’s quiet for a minute, picks at a thread on his jeans. “No,” he says and then, “I don’t know.”

Clint waits him out.

“I guess, I didn’t want for him to hit me anymore, and I didn’t want to be alone so much, but,” he cuts himself off and puts his chin in his hand.

“You want to be with him?” Clint asks, and he’s not really surprised, but then again he is. He’d never presume to know how Jason’s feeling, or how he _should_ feel, but when Clint was little it was a fantasy, a dream he’d have as he was going to sleep to the sound of his father yelling, that someone would take him and Barney away some day. That some long-lost relative would show up on their doorstep and ask if the boys would like to come live with them, where they’d be safe and loved and wanted.

Jason nods. “A little? I mean, ugh. It’s confusing.”

Clint thinks he gets it. He had that fantasy, too, the one where his father woke up one morning and wasn’t an asshole anymore. Where he saw the error of his ways, decided he loved Clint and Barney, and became that ‘normal’ dad that kids at school talked about. “You want to be with him but you want him to be different,” Clint tries, and Jason nods. Clint can see tears welling up in Jason’s green eyes. He puts an arm around him and Jason sucks a sharp breath in.

“I used to want that, too,” he whispers, and Jason looks up, teary-eyed, at him. “I wanted my dad to be a dad who didn’t hit, who wanted me and my brother around, but it never happened. Folks don’t change that drastically, I don’t think.”

“But you were young,” Jason protests. “You said your mom and dad died when you were eight. Maybe my dad would be okay once I got a little older.”

Clint feels his heart break a little bit. He nods. “Maybe, but think about what he was doing wrong. It wasn’t just hitting you that was wrong.”

“He left me alone so much,” Jason says, a memory clearly flashing through his eyes.

Clint remembered buying takeout for Jason at least a couple times a week toward the end. His dad wasn’t just neglectful, he lived there like Jason didn’t exist unless Jason did something wrong. “He left you alone. He’s a guy who didn’t have room in his life for you, and I doubt that would change as you got older, Jason.”

Jason just nods and stares at his shoes, so Clint goes on. “And Chris and Elle want to make you part of their family. That’s so awesome. I wished every day after my parents died that someone like Chris and Elle would come along.”

“Then maybe you should live with them!” Jason snaps, and stands up quickly. Just at that moment, Elle comes in with Clint’s coffee, and Jason looks horrified.

 Elle looks at the coffee and then sets it down on Jason’s desk. “Clint,” she says, “Could you give us a moment?” Her voice is filled with sadness.

He nods, and heads downstairs. This is definitely something Elle and Chris and Jason need to handle. He shouldn’t have said anything about how he feels. This is Jason’s problem right now, not his. He sees Chris sitting at their big, cherry wood kitchen table and sits down across from him. There’s a candle burning in the middle of the table that smells like pine trees. It’s relaxing.

Chris looks up from his computer, startled. “Is everything okay?”

Clint shrugs. “I’m not sure.” He sips his coffee and adds, “Listen, Chris, have you guys thought about getting Jason some therapy?”

Chris nods and closes his computer. “We actually started him a couple weeks ago. He doesn’t talk about that either, but he doesn’t protest going.”

Clint swallows another wave of misplaced jealousy over the kind parenting that Jason landed with. He didn’t really mean to be jealous; it just showed up sometimes. “That’s good. Good,” he repeats. “You may want to get him an appointment tomorrow if you can. I think this is out of my league.”

Chris glances toward the upstairs as if he could see through walls, and sighs. “Yeah. Is Elle with him?”

Clint nods. “You may want to go up. He shouted that maybe I should live here if I think it’s such a good chance for him, just as Elle walked in. I left them to sort through that part.”

Chris closes his eyes, and Clint wonders if that’s what Phil is going to look like in fifteen years. Silver hair, skin just starting to wrinkle around his eyes and chin, that older-but-in-really-good-physical-shape way of carrying himself. Chris is a handsome guy who looks like he can handle any problem thrown his way, and as a SHEILD agent of pretty high ranking when he left, he’s used to handling problems. Jason’s problems are just a new and foreign type for him, clearly. He opens his eyes and stands up.

“You’re more than welcome to stay, Clint, but maybe Elle and I should take it from here?”

Clint considers it. It feels like a moment for the parents, not the close family friend. “I’ll head out,” he says, and puts his mug in the sink. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” he says.

“Clint, if anything you got him talking about whatever it is they’re talking about up there. An hour ago he wouldn’t say a word.” Chris leans over and squeezes Clint’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

Clint heads home. He could go back to the office and finish his forms, but he just wants to go home and be in the space where Phil is, and he should be home pretty soon. Phil’s actually not there by the time he gets there, so he grabs a drink and settles into his couch and turns on an old 80s TV show as Lucky burrows against him. He’s into his third MacGyver episode when Phil comes through the front door carrying takeout from his favorite Thai place.

“80s television?” Phil asks as he sets bags down on the counter. “That’s new.”

Clint pushes up off the couch, dislodging Lucky, who grunts at him, and kind of stumbles over to Phil and drapes himself around Phil’s shoulders with a mumbled, “Never a bad time for MacGyver.”

Phil pulls him close and lets Clint linger there, runs his hand through Clint’s hair and just waits while Clint takes what he needs from the contact. When they pull apart, Phil has a worried look on his face. “What happened?” he asks softly.

Clint moves to the kitchen and pulls down some plates from a cupboard. “Eh, I tried to help, basically projected my own feelings onto Jason’s situation, and made things worse, I think?”

Phil pulls a couple drinks from the refrigerator while Clint adds forks and napkins to the counter and starts filling his plate. He explains what happens, and then they sit quietly eating for a few minutes. Clint feels like he’s sitting at the wrong angle right now, slightly tipped over from the rest of the world, even from Phil, who is sitting across from him trying to puzzle out how to help.

“I don’t know,” Clint says around a mouthful of noodles. “I guess it’s good that it got them talking to each other.”

“Definitely,” Phil replies. “But you’re still thinking about your parents, aren’t you?”

 Phil’s voice is gentle, but the words pierce Clint like tiny darts. They don’t usually talk about his parents. All he can do is nod.

“You never saw your dad get what he deserved,” Phil says, and he’s careful, so careful.

Clint almost chokes on his drink. “Wait. What?” he says, because his dad wrapped himself around a tree. To a lot of people, that’s kind of the definition of getting what he deserved.

Phil shrugs. “Well, I mean. He never had to answer to anyone for what he did, right?”

“Unless you count answering to God if you believe in that sort of thing,” Clint says.

“Do you count that?” Phil asks, watching Clint carefully with those piercing blue eyes that fill Clint with calm.

Clint starts to say ‘yes’, and then he thinks about his mother. He swallows as old grief washes through his chest, leaving his heart pounding. He thinks about her kind green eyes as she tucked him in on nights his father wasn’t home. He thinks about her sharp anger that disappeared as quickly as it came when Clint or Barney did something to upset her. He thinks about her cold gaze at his father, passed out on the ratty blue couch they had. He thinks about her sturdy hands picking up toys and books from the living room floor before his father could get home to bitch about a mess. He thinks about her quick embrace before bed each night that she was around to put Clint to bed. He thinks about his mother and shoves himself away from the table and back into the kitchen before Phil can see what thinking about his mother really does to him.

He stands at the sink and holds onto the counter with a white-knuckled grip and suddenly his breaths are ragged and quick.

“Clint?” Phil almost whispers from behind him. “I’m sorry,” he says, sad and quiet.  

“It’s just,” Clint starts, but his voice gives out on him and he has to stop, swallow, and breathe. “It’s just that Jason’s getting exactly what I wanted.”

Phil moves closer and pulls Clint into an embrace from behind, his chin on Clint’s shoulder.

Clint goes on. “I mean, not exactly, because I really just wanted my mom to leave him and take us somewhere we could be together just the three of us, but I knew that would never happen. So I wanted him to be locked away and I wanted a new father. I wanted kind parents who wanted the best for me, who wanted me around, who couldn’t dream of hitting me.” On the last words, his voice gives way entirely, and Phil turns him around gently and holds him while age-old tears track down his cheeks.

He can’t do anything but hold on tight to Phil, fisting his hands in Phil’s untucked dress shirt and shaking silently against him. He’s not sure he’s ever lost it like this over his parents, not since that first awful experience in foster care. Phil holds him tight and brushes his hand through his hair. Whispers, “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay,” over and over again.

A knock on the front door startles them both out of their embrace. Phil goes and opens it while Clint wipes off his face with some water from the sink. He hears a small voice say, “Is Clint here?”

It’s Jason and Elle, standing in the doorway looking like they’d both been crying, too. Clint swallows thickly and goes out to meet them, standing close to Phil, their shoulders touching. “Hey kid,” he manages, and Jason’s eyes widen when he realizes that Clint’s been upset by all of this.

Jason looks up at Elle, who smiles and nods toward Clint. Jason bites his lip and moves close, reaching toward Clint for a hug. Clint pulls him close, wraps his arms around Jason’s back and tucks his head close to his chest, and the tears come back again. They’re uninvited, but Clint knows they’re not unwelcome.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Clint,” Jason says, his voice rough and tentative.

“I’m sorry I thought I knew how you should feel,” Clint replies, and he looks up at Elle. She’s standing there in her long grey coat and holding her fist to her mouth, like she’s trying not to cry. She smiles at Clint and it’s reassuring, like she knows where he’s coming from, why he said what he did. He supposes she does, on the surface, but it’s Jason who understands, who knows what Clint’s wish feels like, who’s standing there gripping Clint hard and getting the front of Clint’s shirt wet.

Jason finally stops crying, and he steps back, wiping his eyes. “You said something about a movie and popcorn?” he asks with a sheepish grin. “Elle said it’s okay if you still want to.”

Clint wipes his own eyes and glances over at Phil. “Is it okay if Phil comes along?” he asks.

Jason nods. “I kinda want Elle and Chris along, too. Chris is waiting with the car,” he adds, and Clint feels his heartbeat finally slow down.

Jason pauses, and adds, very quietly, “A movie with my family sounds like a good idea tonight.”

Clint closes his eyes briefly, thinking again of his mother, of Barney, and even of his father, shadows fading back into the background of Clint’s life, where they belong. Here, these four people heading off to buy tubs of popcorn with him, this is his family. He reaches out and ruffles Jason’s hair. “A movie with my family sounds like a very good idea tonight. Let’s go.”

The movie kind of sucks, but Clint gets to put his head on Phil’s shoulder, gets to share popcorn and chocolate with Jason, gets to watch Chris and Elle dote on Jason, and gets to come home to Lucky tackling him in the doorway. Even his dreams are quiet that night, and he wakes up with Phil brushing his hand down his cheek and smiling.

All in all, his night with his family is just what he needs.

 

 

 


End file.
